


Childhood

by Odyle



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/pseuds/Odyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Tauron civil war began, her parents pulled her out of school and sent her to a Tauron school in the neighborhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childhood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seariderfalcon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seariderfalcon/gifts).



When the Tauron civil war began, her parents pulled her out of school and sent her to a Tauron school in the neighborhood.

"Evelyn, it is important for you to know your people," her father said.

She didn't like the new school much.

The teachers called her 'Eua,' not 'Evelyn.' The other children called her _vlákas_ , but the teachers never chided them for it.

They had to wear uniforms. The woolen skirts were itchy and her socks wouldn't stay up as they were supposed to, and the teachers often rapped her knuckles with their batons.

Speaking Caprican at school was forbidden. There were some children who didn't speak a word of it, despite having been born and raised in Caprica City. Evelyn spoke almost no Tauron. Her parents spoke to one another in Tauron, but never to her. They were never going back to Tauron, her mother had explained to her, so there was no need for Evelyn to speak the language. When the civil war started, their attitude changed. Her father went through her room, putting labels on everything with the word in Tauron. He substituted Tauron words for the Caprican. It only served to turn her around and confuse her.

The other children teased.

 _Deaf!_

 _Deaf!_

 _She's too dumb to speak!_

Evelyn understood enough for their barbs to wound.

She would come home and cry in her room until it was time to wash up for supper. She said nothing of the torture to her parents, knowing that their only advice would be to fight back. Fighting was tacitly encouraged at her new school. Evelyn had seen teenage boys beat one another until they were bleeding. Not the childish fighting that resulted in bloody noses and scrapes, but something more vicious, where the opponents often walked away bleeding from the ears or clutching broken noses. It was a regular occurrence during lunches, hardly noteworthy.

Evelyn spent most of her lunches beneath a tree in the school yard, reading whatever Caprican book she'd smuggled in. Her grades were terrible because she could not complete any of the assignments except for those in math.

After the first trimester's grades came in, her father extended her misery by sending her to Saturday morning Tauron school. There wasn't a class basic enough, so they gave her a private tutor, an old woman who was possibly more vicious than the teachers at school.

"You're a stupid girl," the old woman would hiss. "Not Tauron. Caprican."

Evelyn wanted to agree. There was a mutual understanding there that she was Tauron only by family connection. This understanding did not, however, convince the old woman to curb her cruelty.

More and more of her relatives moved into the neighborhood each week. Few mornings passed where there was no reunion as her father walked her to school. A friend from back home on Tauron would recognize her father and they would pull each other close and Evelyn would be late another day. He always introduced them as uncles, aunts, and cousins even when Evelyn was sure they were no blood relation of hers.

The teachers would make her stand at the back of the classroom her back turned toward the wall as penance. Her classmates would giggle at her shame. After a time, Evelyn could not bring herself to care.

"You are Tauron. It is in your blood, that is all that matters," her father would tell her.

She knew that the headmistress had called her father in to tell advise him to pull Evelyn out of the school. She was losing weight. Biting her nails. Her reading teacher suspected she was pulling her hair out. The Saturday lessons had improved her vocabulary enough to understand when her father relayed as much to her mother over dinner.

She lived with her parents in one of the posh neighborhoods downtown. Evelyn's father owned one of the biggest department stores in Caprica City and her mother was an aide to the mayor. She saw her mother only at supper, if even then. Her mother was second in command and there were rumblings that she would run once the current mayor left office and the citizens of Caprica City were no longer so riled up by the number of refugees from Tauron flooding into their city. Her father ate breakfast and dinner with her every day and walked her to and from school. Some nights he would even brush her hair before tucking her in to sleep.

They went to more funerals during the civil war. Often there was nothing to gather around but an urn. It was worse when there was a body. Sometimes her father or some uncle would lift her up and direct her to kiss the lips of whatever dead cousin lay in the casket. Their skin was cold and firm. It was nothing like kissing a living person. When they put her down she would quickly hurry away to rub away whatever taint of death they had left on her lips.

"This is why you must know your heritage," her father told her.

Seeing the dead cousins in their caskets didn't make her feel any more Tauron. At ten years old, they meant nothing to her. None of it made her feel more Tauron it only made her feel alone. It was not until she was an adult that Evelyn began to feel her roots.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta who shall be known at this time only as Commander Shepard.
> 
> There may be a follow up to this in the new year.


End file.
